


A Rented Room

by Minutia_R



Series: Dreamworld Ladies [4]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen, Writers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-03 02:40:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10957965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/pseuds/Minutia_R
Summary: WANTED: Room for rent in quiet, remote location.  Several hours’ journey from the nearest village a plus.  MUST NOT be on the radio.





	A Rented Room

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kiraly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiraly/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Field Notes From Finland](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9333158) by [Kiraly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiraly/pseuds/Kiraly). 



> Happy birthday, Kiraly! Every writer needs a writing buddy; I'm glad you're one of mine.
> 
> For those of you who are not Kiraly: Rúna is Kiraly's version of the author of the info pages; she first appeared in [Field Notes From Finland](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9333158), and later in [The World Carries on Without You](http://worldsentwined.tumblr.com/post/157294055379/the-world-carries-on-without-you). The idea that Reynir's grandma Hildur wrote romance novels featuring a glamorized version of her husband is also Kiraly's, and you can read a sample of Hildur's writing (which I swiped a bit of for this story) and see a romance-novel-cover-worthy picture of Ragnar [here](http://worldsentwined.tumblr.com/post/152708292584/the-shepherds-staff-by-hildur-bjarnad%C3%B3ttir-a).
> 
> Thank you to Laufey for her Iceland-related help and looking this over!

_WANTED: Room for rent in quiet, remote location. Several hours’ journey from the nearest village a plus. MUST NOT be on the radio._

The advertisement in the week-old newspaper caught Hildur’s eye, and she quickly brushed the potato peelings to the other side of the paper so the ink wouldn’t run. She tore it off, stuck it in her pocket, and went back to fixing dinner. If she got the stew on the fire quickly, she might have half an hour before Árni woke up to look over the proofs her editor in Reykjavík had sent her.

#

After dinner, when Ragnar was doing the washing up and Árni was “helping”--which mostly meant throwing handfuls of suds at Loki until he arched his back and stalked out of the room, hissing--Hildur said, “Why don’t we fix up your parents’ old bedroom and rent it out?”

Ragnar shook his head. “I don’t think there are going to be many people interested in renting a room all the way out here.”

So Hildur took the torn-off advertisement out of her pocket and showed it to him. He held it gingerly, by the corner, with his wet fingers.

“That’s a bit of an unusual request, don’t you think?” he said. “What if they’re an axe murderer?”

Hildur slipped her arms around his waist and nuzzled his neck. “Then it’s a good thing I have my big, strong, Viking warrior to protect me.”

“Oh, not this again,” Ragnar muttered. His skin beneath Hildur’s nose heated with a blush, and when she looked up, she saw his face was a brighter red than his hair.

“His eyes, night-dark and brooding under that chiseled brow, flashed with a spark like struck steel when he heard the wobble of distress in his beloved’s voice, despite her brave words,” she went on. “Or, I don’t know, maybe ‘wobble’ is wrong there, it sounds kind of silly, doesn’t it? The knuckles on his big, strong hands whitened as he gripped his staff, and--”

“Shut _up._ ” Ragnar, laughing, grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her in for a kiss. The advertisement fluttered to the floor, seemingly forgotten, but when they broke apart, he said, “Oh, all right. But only because you’re obviously going crazy at home all day with no one but a toddler and the cats for company.”

#

It was another two months until the new tenant came, filled with back-and-forth correspondence about references, contracts, and all sorts of arrangements that Hildur had never thought about before she’d decided to become a landlady. Sometimes she wished she’d never seen the advertisement. Between Árni and the farm, she barely had time for her writing, and she grudged every minute that she had to spend on something else. Her editor in Reykjavík started to send her terse little notes wondering when the manuscript for the next book might arrive, and Hildur had no good answer.

Mostly, though, Ragnar was right--she was lonely. She’d often not gotten along with her in-laws, but when the round-up started and Ragnar was away from home for days at a time, she missed them sharply. Them, or any adult human company. Then she took out the letters she’d gotten and read them over, even when she was really supposed to be doing something else. _Rúna Snorradóttir: Explorer, Historical Researcher, and Student of Modern Anthropology_ , the letterhead read. A little pretentious, certainly, but on the other hand, how exciting! There hadn’t even been a Known World when she’d been a girl, only Iceland, and she’d spent the first years of her marriage braving her father-in-law’s mournful looks to avidly read the accounts of the first meetings with Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes.

And now someone who had actually been to those exotic places was looking for a quiet place to write up her research, and had chosen Hildur’s farm to do it! So let her editor complain, or let it be hard bread and cheese for dinner again--Hildur had to make sure everything was perfect for when Rúna came.

#

She finally arrived a couple of weeks after New Year, when the sheep were safely shut up in their winter pens. Hildur’s first view of her was of a figure wrapped in a cloak, sitting on top of the stagecoach from Reykjavík in the sideways rain, holding tight to the railing to avoid being blown off. When Hildur expressed her alarm, Rúna laughed and said, “Oh, this? Once I spent a week camping in Finland and the rain didn’t let up the entire time! And after all, a little rain won’t hurt me, but it would have destroyed my papers.”

And in fact, when the coachman helped Rúna down and opened the door of the coach, there sitting in the seat which must have been reserved for her was a stack of boxes tied up with twine. Between Hildur, Rúna, the coachman, and another passenger whom Rúna--despite not actually having traveled inside the carriage--seemed to have become great friends with on the trip up from Reykjavík, they managed to stow the boxes in Hildur’s farm cart under a tarp while keeping them mostly dry during the transfer.

“There’s so much!” said Hildur.

“Not too much, I hope,” said Rúna. “I wouldn’t like to disturb your domestic arrangements, but I couldn’t make up my mind to leave any of it behind. I need all my travel journals, and there are my letters from my foreign correspondents, and a dozen reference books I might need to consult--I only wish I could have brought my typewriter, but it was much too heavy.”

Hildur clambered into the cart and bent down to help Rúna up. “Well, you can borrow my typewriter, whenever I’m not typing up my own manuscripts on it.”

“Oh, do you write?” Rúna asked.

“Nothing much,” said Hildur, thinking of her unfinished book, which she’d barely touched in weeks. It was embarrassing, especially when she compared her work to the reams of research piled up in the back of the cart. “Just--romances.”

“Wait.” Rúna pushed her wet hair out of her face and back under her hood, staring at Hildur in something like shock. “You’re the Hildur Bjarnadóttir who wrote _The Shepherd’s Staff_?”

“You’ve read _The Shepherd’s Staff_?” said Hildur.

Rúna seized her hands impulsively. “You saved my life!” Hildur must have looked as confused as she felt, because Rúna went on, “I’m serious--I was snowed in one winter in a little outpost in Norway, and there was absolutely nothing else to read. If it hadn’t been for you I’m sure I would have gone crazy and gone out and attacked a giant with my bare hands or something.”

“Ah--” said Hildur.

“And you said you have manuscripts to type up--are you working on something new? Is there any chance I could get a sneak peek at it?”

“I suppose,” said Hildur, torn between lingering embarrassment and the desire to show her work to someone. “If I can have a look at some of your journals.”

“It’s a deal,” said Rúna. “Come on, let’s go home so we can start reading.”


End file.
